


See How We Burn

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [21]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Battle Couple, Caretaking, F/M, Feelings Realization, Fluff and Smut, Frostbite, Gentle Sex, Huddling For Warmth, Idiots in Love, Naked Cuddling, Sharing a Bed, Tenderness, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, the helmet comes off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:02:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25033651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: “I need to get myself into an oven for a defrosting,” she added with a shiver that made her wrap her arms around herself. She was in her underwear, now, and the movement highlighted her breasts in a way that made Din forget about the cold all at once.“And since we don't have an oven,” she continued, taking a step closer to him with a sultry smirk painted across her mouth. “I'm gonna get the next best thing around here.”She grabbed his shirt and gave it an eloquent tug.“Time to get naked, Djarin.”Din broke out into a muffled laugh. This woman's nerve...They were at a point in their relationship were everything was tempting but still uncharted, and though their intimacy had been rapidly growing, they had never got to the point of being nakedtogetheruntil now.“Buy me a drink, first?” he quipped, wrapping his hands around the one she was still fisting his shirt with.Cara gave him a sly grin, her teeth digging coyly into a corner of her bottom lip.“You're such hard work,” she muttered, rising on her tiptoes to brush a light kiss over his mouth. “I'll buy you two if you help me out of this stuff, too.”
Relationships: Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709416
Comments: 33
Kudos: 156
Collections: My Favorite Fics





	See How We Burn

**Author's Note:**

> I lie all the time, so I shouldn't be surprised I lied again, right?
> 
> I said I would finish what I started before working on new stuff, but you guys asked for this and triggered my muse, so here's the result: the infamous night before In The Middle of The Night, I Hold On To You Tight. Like in the previous part, the helmet comes off on a daily basis, no big deal.
> 
> As usual, this started off as very soft and romantic and I meant to leave the smut implied but guess what? Our horny idiots took the wheel. Let them have fun, am I right?
> 
> P.S. I totally forgot the first installment was written in present tense and only realised halfway through writing this in past tense. I decided to leave it in past tense. I'm a mess. Sorry. 😅

Din shut their guy into the carbonite slabs compartment (the Dumpster, as Cara liked to call it) and locked it back with a tired sigh. The were going to need a couple of weeks off after this one.

He still felt guilty for leaving the child alone for long hours in this awful weather, but the deadly cold raging outside and the dangers of the hunt would have been too much for him. He was fast asleep in his pram, exactly where they left him before heading out.

Din walked back to the main room, his armour dripping from the frost quickly thawing off the beskar at the comparatively high temperature within the ship. He found Cara discarding her weapons into a haphazard pile, very uncharateristic of her, hair damp and shiny with icy droplets despite the thick hood she'd been wearing.

“Hey,” he called, observing the purple on her lips and the angry red blotches of frostbite on her cheeks with a displeased frown, “You okay?”

“Peachy,” she said, ripping a frozen glove off with her teeth. Her teeth were chattering.

Din could barely look at her without feeling a pang of guilt in his guts. She was always by his side, fighting with him, _for_ him, sometimes, and at the end of the day, whenever they came back to the Crest and started the wound count, Din couldn't even look at the marks on her body – the bruises, the wounds, the burns. Cara was proud, at times even smug, of each of them, and even today, despite a few occasional groans, she couldn't stop grinning, still high on adrenaline.

It took Din only a couple of minutes to get rid of his entire armour, while it took Cara twice as long only to take off the heavy winter jacket she was wrapped up into. Her hands were angry red, probably burning from the abrupt temperature shift, and she was struggling with the fastenings and the tiny buttons.

“Let me,” he said.

Cara didn't even blink; she just lowered her hands and let him do all the work. By the time he was done, a large pool of water had formed on the floor, but they would take care of this later.

“This was _awesome,_ but no more stupid ice planets for the time being,” said Cara, tossing her soaked shirt to the ground. “I need to get myself into an oven for a defrosting,” she added with a shiver that made her wrap her arms around herself. She was in her underwear, now, and the movement highlighted her breasts in a way that made Din forget about the cold all at once.

“And since we don't have an oven,” she continued, taking a step closer to him with a sultry smirk painted across her mouth. “I'm gonna get the next best thing around here.”

She grabbed his shirt and gave it an eloquent tug.

“Time to get naked, Djarin.”

Din broke out into a muffled laugh. This woman's nerve...

They were at a point in their relationship where everything was tempting but still uncharted, and though their intimacy had been rapidly growing, they had never got to the point of being naked _together_ until now.

“Buy me a drink, first?” he quipped, wrapping his hands around the one she was still fisting his shirt with.

Cara gave him a sly grin, her teeth digging coyly into a corner of her bottom lip.

“You're such hard work,” she muttered, rising on her tiptoes to brush a light kiss over his mouth. “I'll buy you two if you help me out of this stuff, too,” she said, leading his hands up to her bra. “I can't feel my damn hands.”

He could tell. Through the flirtatious seductiveness, Din could feel how desperate she genuinely was for warmth: her fingers felt like ice, she was trembling head to toe.

“Come here,” he smiled, dragging her closer. He spread his hands over her shoulders and slid them down her arms, trying to rub some of his warmth into her skin. He was feeling cold, too, but the insulation in his armour had provided a better protection than her winter clothes had.

Cara leant forward and bent her arms to tuck them between her chest and his as he wrapped her up into a comforting embrace.

After weeks, he still wasn't used to the feeling of her body. She didn't feel like anybody he had ever touched before: in his experience, people felt either hard and taut or sweet and soft; Cara was an extraordinary combination of both, chiselled muscles and soft curves masterfully welded together into patterns that called to Din's senses in ways he wasn't strong enough to resist.

It was difficult to be in love with someone as gorgeous as Cara Dune and not wonder how much of the attraction he felt for her came from sheer, primeval lust. It had taken him a while to make peace with the fact that, in fact, love and lust were both infinitely more intense and inescapable when they went together; besides, it seemed only fair that a soul so strong and beautiful would belong to an equally strong and beautiful body.

”I want these clothes out of the way,” she murmured against his chest. Her breath was hot and humid and elicited a wake of goosebumps all over Din's back.

“That might not be the best idea.”

Albeit _clothes_ was an all too exaggerated word for what they were wearing by now, if even that little barrier dropped, he feared he might lose control of his own actions.

“I don't care if it's a bad idea, just get me out of these frozen things and curl into bed with me.”

Din couldn't help his smile from growing wider. So maybe this _was_ a bad idea, but if Cara didn't mind, who was he to object?

“I cannot guarantee my body's reaction will be... gentlemanly,” he warned.

Cara hummed, rubbing her cheek against him.

“What are you talking about? It's not like I've never seen you hard for me before.”

He could feel her chuckle upon himself, and it felt amazing. Though he had been the one trying to keep things from evolving too quickly, he also had to admit resisting Cara's powerful allure was both a challenge and a sweet agony. As lethal as she was a warrior, it was impossible to ignore the intoxicating sexual vibes she gave off: Din might be wearing beskar most of the time, but he was not _made_ of beskar, and he only had so much moral and physical strength.

“You're not helping,” he laughed.

“I'm just saying, there's nothing wrong about that. I wouldn't mind... you know, _helping you out.”_

Din's breath hitched at the picture of Cara's hand around him.

“I thought we said we wouldn't rush things,” he said, voice not entirely firm, as his pulse started climbing.

Cara turned to press a kiss to his breastbone.

“We're not rushing anything.” She looked up, resting her chin against him. “I just want us to get warm, okay? If things happen, let them. We can still take it easy with... everything else.”

 _Everything else_ meaning _feelings._ They didn't know where they stood, exactly, or, more correctly, they didn't know if they were ready to acknowledge how deep in it they actually were. Kisses and touches, even more intimate ones, were no big deal by now, but the idea of _more_ inexplicably seemed larger than life.

“It doesn't have to mean anything,” Cara promised.

Din's heart was aching with _want_ – physical and emotional. Having her like this, curled into his arms, pliant and needy, was forcing his beliefs to shift into whole new perspectives, and what had seemed so terrifying, so far, now was starting to feel as natural as breathing.

He hooked two fingers under her chin and smiled down at her.

“Unless we want it to.”

Something sparked in her eyes, a flash of excitement that immediately reflected into a smile mirroring his own.

“Who are you? Where is my Din?”

He arched an eyebrow. _“Your_ Din?”

“Shut up,” she giggled. She gingerly disentangled her arms from between them and slid them around his waist, letting her fingers venture below the line of his briefs. He barely stifled a gasp when she grabbed his bottom and squeezed.

“We don't have to do anything,” she said, dropping a trail of tantalising kisses along his jawline, “but we don't have to refrain ourselves, either.”

Din let out a breathless sigh, tilting his head back to let Cara take her kisses lower down his neck. She was _good._ She was irresistibly good.

Getting her out of her bra was a task that required much more willpower than Din would have imagined. He couldn't breathe when she held her arms up to let him pull up the garment; her bared breasts made his mouth go dry with desire.

She grinned at his open awe and pushed her panties down without a single hint of shame, then tugged at his underwear, too.

“Off,” she ordered, and Din understood she wanted to watch him strip, which he did without taking his eyes from her, revelling under her appreciative gaze. It was hard to believe they could feel so comfortable being naked in front of each other so suddenly. Din guessed it spoke volumes about the depth of intimacy they had reached.

Once under the covers, Cara cuddled up to him, cold and shivering, trying to get as much of herself as possible plastered against him. Her feet were frozen between his shins; he stroked them with his own, attempting to provide warmth through friction.

“Stars, this feels amazing.”

There was a hint of eroticism in how low and husky her voice sounded. This didn't _have_ to turn sexual, but Din was already half hard and there was nothing at all he could do about it.

“This wasn't a good idea,” he complained, though his body was all but complaining.

Cara tucked herself closer to him, a leg slung over his hip, her head under his chin.

“It was an _excellent_ idea,” she said while tracing her lips along his collarbone. “I already feel better.”

Din's sight blurred when she started sucking at his pulse. Both his breath and hers were getting faster. The feeling of her breasts and her hardened nipples pressing into his skin, combined with the hunger of her ministrations, was about to drive Din insane.

“ _Cara,”_ he warned, croaky and choked.

She slowed down, but didn't stop.

“Mmh?”

“I'm serious, you should stop doing that.”

Cara hesitantly pulled back.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, “I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Din let out an indulgent laugh.

“I'm the very opposite of uncomfortable,” he informed her, wanting to erase that guilty shadow from her expression

Cara placed a hand on his chest to glance up at him.

“What's the problem, then?”

He bent forward and rest his head against hers with a reassuring smile.

“This is torture,” he said, running a hand up and down the haunting softness of her back.

”It's torture because you're an idiot,” huffed Cara. She pressed herself harder against him, the damp heat between her legs burning over his hip. “Put those hands wherever you like, do you think I mind?”

Din exhaled a weary sigh. Patiently, Cara took his hand and accompanied it down past the small of her back, moaning faintly when he finally allowed himself to grope the perfect roundness of her ass.

He felt a twitch of ecstasy in his growing hardness: being able to touch Cara like this still felt like a privilege he had done nothing to deserve.

Cara must be feeling it, too, because she rocked her hips against him with a little chuckle.

“Still torture?”

“Yes,” he rasped, “in a very different way.”

She rolled on her back and drew him along with her, locking their lips together in a kiss that began ever so quietly and rapidly gained a greedy fierceness that had them both gasp into it.

Din traced his tongue into Cara's mouth, kissing the cold away. He cupped a hand behind her neck and deepened the kiss, briefly dragging his teeth over her bottom lip before nipping at it, making Cara moan out loud.

He had no idea how he had expected himself not to give in to all this temptation. What a fool. This was too much to resist for a humble human being.

“You're so beautiful,” he murmured into her neck.

Cara spread a hand through his hair, pushing up against his mouth as she laughed.

“Gotta love this disarming honesty.”

Her breathing was getting frantic, much to Din's delight. He felt insanely powerful to know he could turn her on.

He kissed the tender flesh of one her breasts and palmed the other gently, the feeling of her nipple hardening beneath his touch causing a painful throb in his crotch.

Cara's groan when he took her nipple into his mouth was so loud it made Din falter.

“What is it?” he inquired, afraid he might have hurt her, sensitive as she must be from the cold.

“Your beard,” she panted, her eyes glossy with lust.

“Does it hurt?”

“All the contrary,” she smirked.

Smirking back, Din dragged his chin across her breast, flickering his tongue over her nipple as his fingers massaged into the other breast.

Cara threw her head back, arching up against him.

“Keep doing that,” she moaned, “feels good.”

“You're so soft...”

“What the hell, Din?” she giggled. ”You've touched me before.”

“Not like this.”

She combed his hair back, meeting his look with a smile that bore no mischief.

“Touch starved much?” she asked, her tone veiled with a tinge of melancholy.

“I guess,” he admitted, unable to take his eyes from hers. A great part of her beauty lay there, in those impossibly dark and impossibly bright irises. There were still droplets of water caught between her lashes, remnants of the ice that had painted them white while they were out there in the blizzard.

She cupped his face into her hand and fondly swiped her thumb across his cheek, then his bottom lip.

“Good thing we have the whole night, then.”

The purple had gone from her lips, but the red on her cheeks was still there and, if anything, it was only intensifying.

“Does this hurt?” asked Din, ghosting his fingertips over the burning patch of skin.

Cara shrugged.

“I can take a little bit of frostbite. Those coarse fingers of yours feel like sandpaper, though,” she added with a small giggle.

Din immediately took his hand away.

“Forgive me.”

“There's somewhere I'm sure they'll feel much better,” she said, suggestively bucking her hips against his thigh. She was so _wet_ already...

“ _Cara.”_

“Keep saying my name like that and this is going to escalate very quickly,” she warned while grabbing his hand to guide it between her legs.

Din groaned when he realised she wasn't just wet: she was _soaked._ He moved his fingers blindly, burying them into her dripping heat; Cara pressed herself down into his touch with a satisfied mewl that sent a flare of arousal through Din's whole body.

“You can explore, you know? I'm not gonna break,” she said encouragingly, and the hoarseness of her tone alone nearly drove him over the edge. He was rock hard, now, leaking desperately over the inside of her thigh.

She guided him, helping his fingers between her folds to part them. Din's breath cut sharp in his throat at how soft and wet she was. He moved his thumb experimentally, brushing it over her slick clit, and Cara's back arched with a loud moan that went straight to Din's groin.

The movement made a couple of his fingers slip inside her, causing him to gasp in return, amazed by how pliantly she opened up for him.

He licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry. He dared to push a little further, sinking into the hot dampness, and he was rewarded by a frantic moan and Cara's hips eagerly pressing down on him.

“That's- good,” she choked, a beautiful blush spreading down to her neck, eyelids heavy with lust.

She whimpered in protest when Din pulled his fingers out of her, and squeezed her thighs to keep him where she wanted him.

Din smiled down at her, encircling his free arm around her head. He brushed a few stands of hair out of her face, then leant down to kiss her forehead while his fingers teased between her legs.

“Always so bossy,” he murmured affectionately.

She looked damn beautiful, flushed and panting, hair fanned out around her like a dark halo.

What was about to come next felt inevitable, now, and it was almost funny, after such a long, doubtful stalling. What were they so afraid of? Sex was as natural as the feelings they had developed for each other, and just as simple. It was their hidden fear of building something so important and so valuable to hold them back, but what they felt wouldn't go away just because they were trying to keep it at bay. There was no point in denying any of this. There never was.

He leant down and kissed her, more passionately than he'd ever done before. It left Cara paralysed, but just for a split second; after the initial shock, she melted into it, her arms folding around his neck, her knees spreading to let him fall between them, his erection pulsating hot and eager against her.

She reached down to grab him, but Din caught her wrist to stop her.

“Don't,” he whispered. “I won't last a second if you touch me,” he clarified, offering a smile at her confusion as he brushed an apologetic kiss on her forehead. “Let me enjoy this.”

“We don't have to-” she began, his lips brushing avidly on his neck, on his shoulder, but Din shook his head.

“I want to,” he said, voice thick with desire. He felt like he should be completely honest with her, though, and lay out all the cards on the table before taking any further step, because there would be no going back from this.

“Cara,” he breathed above her lips. “This- this means everything to me.”

A shiver ran down his spine as Cara's soft laugh crawled deep into his soul and ignited a fire that burned so much deeper and more wildly than mere passion.

She tugged him down into a kiss, just lips upon lips, over and over and over. It was like she couldn't stop. It was like she couldn't stop smiling, either.

“Din kriffing Djarin,” she said in an adoring whisper that brought tears to his eyes, “This means everything to both of us.”

They kissed again, this time hungrily enough to have them panting in a matter of seconds. Cara bent a knee and Din took her ankle to tuck her leg around himself as he shifted; the tip of his hard-on skimmed over the inviting wetness of her core, making her gasp greedily in his mouth.

He slid his hand around her hip and lifted her just enough to align himself at her entrance; he waited for a sign of indecision from Cara, but all he got was an impatient hum, and that was it.

He slipped into her with a single thrust, and the sudden heat surrounding him knocked the air out of his lungs.

He stilled, taking a moment to adjust to the maddening feeling of how tight she was. He gave a tentative nudge with his hips, looking into Cara's eyes for any trace of pain, but she just looked back through heavy lids, biting a satisfied grin between her teeth.

“You feel amazing.” She sought a quick kiss, then sank back into the pillow, chest heaving, and smirked. “Now you better start moving and give me what I need before I flip you over and ride myself there.”

Din's laugh mixed with a galvanised groan that made him jerk into her out of pure instinct. It took a few thrusts to pick up a rhythm that suited them both. Din was cautious, Cara more yearning; they ended up influencing each other, Cara's urgency making Din bolder, Din's gentleness coaxing Cara into feeling and enjoying each of his thrusts, easing the excess of greed away with soothing caresses along her flank, her face, the softness of her skin as stimulating as her walls getting tighter and tighter around Din.

She tossed her head back and cried loudly when he hit the right spot inside her; he mouthed her exposed throat, his pushes getting more and more wanton as the orgasm started pooling in his loins. He pulled out of her for a moment, receiving a disappointed gasp in response; he silenced Cara's protest with a kiss and wrapped an arm around her waist, hauling her up to meet the new angle of his hips; when he slid back into her she was even tighter than before. The immediate clench of her walls made him shudder, his thrusts almost aggressive, now, and each of them made Cara moan louder, her legs clutched around him, trying to pull him deeper into her as her climax approached.

Driven by an unknown compulsion, Din buried his face into her neck, nibbling at the tender flesh below her ear while his other hand reached down where their bodies met and found her swollen clit. His fingers took a moment to savour the feeling of himself pushing inside her over and over, then turned the other way to touch her. He barely had to stroke her once before he felt her clench around him with a scream so drenched in pleasure he found himself screaming her name into her neck as he came inside her, a flash of blinding white exploding beneath his screwed eyelids.

They collapsed side by side, still tangled together, panting heavily and happily.

He scutinised her, flushed and gorgeous just an inch from his face, her skin glistening with sweat, and smiled back at the big, dreamy smile she gave him.

“That was... one hell of a defrosting,” she breathed.

The joyful glimmer in her eyes crept into Din's heart and made him realise how badly he had wanted this, despite how stubbornly he had been trying to deny it. It wasn't only the sexual pleasure of the afterglow making him so elated; it was, above anything else, the sensation of finally finding a completion they had both been looking for but were to insecure to find.

 _This means everything,_ he thought, watching her eyes flutter, heavy with exhaustion.

He brought a hand to her face, moved a couple of wet locks away, then kissed her tenderly.

“Sleep,” he whispered upon her lips.

She nodded meekly, cuddling up to him, welcome by his waiting arms, finally cold no more.

He placed a hand on her naked shoulder and kissed it between a soft caress and the next.

“Sleep,” he whispered again, even if Cara's breath had already evened out.

He pulled the blankets up to cover them both, then let his head fall back beside hers and let his eyes close, too.

 _This means everything for both of us,_ he reminded himself.

A warm smile spread on his lips as he fell asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted this to be soft and tender despite the smut and I hope I was able to inject the love I wanted in their intimacy, because when it comes to these two I can't just conceive them having sex without being deep into a giant mess of feelings, too.
> 
>  _To whoever read this and liked this and every other story out there: your kudos are amazing, but consider making an author extremely happy with just a single line in a comment. It means the world to us, we read and cherish them all, even the ones left in older stories. Please, remember how little it takes to reward a writer for their hard work whenever you get to the end of a story and only press a kudos button. One line, three words, a string of emojis... everything is a joy and a blessing to receive. Remember that._ ❤


End file.
